Favourite Poet?

[Zanahoria_Picante]

Eh?

And do you have a favorite poem of his or hers?

***

Other than Tolkien's poetry, E.E. Cummings has some very read-able works. He was one CArazy, formerly-avant-garde cat!

Observe:

anyone lived in a pretty how town

anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn't he danced his did

Women and men(both little and small)
cared for anyone not at all
they sowed their isn't they reaped their same
sun moon stars rain

children guessed(but only a few
and down they forgot as up they grew
autumn winter spring summer)
that noone loved him more by more

when by now and tree by leaf
she laughed his joy she cried his grief
bird by snow and stir by still
anyone's any was all to her

someones married their everyones
laughed their cryings and did their dance
(sleep wake hope and then)they
said their nevers they slept their dream

stars rain sun moon
(and only the snow can begin to explain
how children are apt to forget to remember
with up so floating many bells down)

one day anyone died i guess
(and noone stooped to kiss his face)
busy folk buried them side by side
little by little and was by was

all by all and deep by deep
and more by more they dream their sleep
noone and anyone earth by april
wish by spirit and if by yes.

Women and men(both dong and ding)
summer autumn winter spring
reaped their sowing and went their came
sun moon stars rain

Emily Dickinson comes in at a close second.

P.S. I intentionally varied the spellings of "favo(u)rite" in order to avoid discrimination/bias/mutiny/etc.

[EmperorChaos]

My favorite poet would probably be, as John Keating refers to him in Dead Poets Society, "Uncle Walt". Yes I love Walt Whitman and I think that's why my poetry (when I've written it) has seemed so much more "American" than the great metered rhymes of Kali, Zana, and others on this site. Song of Myself is a masterpiece that describes not only Mr. Whitman, but also, myself, I believe.

However, my favorite poem would be "Ozymandias" by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Many people do not like Shelley. I do, however. "Ozymandias", reminds me of the Neoclassical Renaissance Era, only in poem form, as it brings back to mind the Greeks and Egyptians. Ozmandias was the Greek name for Ramesses II (better known as Ramesses the Great) who was such an egotistical megalomaniac that he had several sculptures of himself produced as well as many hieroglyphic inscriptions carved detailing his deeds, which were great. He was a prolific warrior. He was perhaps the greatest Pharaoh that Egypt had ever seen and he expanded her borders to the largest they'd ever be.

But this ain't about Egyptian history. I should probably make a history thread for myself, heh.

Here's "Ozymandias" in its entirety, with my favorite and most oft-recited part emphasized:

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed.

And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Inspiring words for a would-be Emperor. Hence, for my online namesake, all Empires fall into Chaos.

[foxyphoenix]

I know it's totally cliche, but I absolutely love Robert Frost.

Choose Something Like a Star

O Star (the fairest one in sight),
We grant your loftiness the right
To some obscurity of cloud --
It will not do to say of night,
Since dark is what brings out your light.
Some mystery becomes the proud.
But to be wholly taciturn
In your reserve is not allowed.
Say something to us we can learn
By heart and when alone repeat.
Say something! And it says "I burn."
But say with what degree of heat.
Talk Fahrenheit, talk Centigrade.
Use language we can comprehend.
Tell us what elements you blend.
It gives us strangely little aid,
But does tell something in the end.
And steadfast as Keats' Eremite,
Not even stooping from its sphere,
It asks a little of us here.
It asks of us a certain height,
So when at times the mob is swayed
To carry praise or blame too far,
We may choose something like a star
To stay our minds on and be staid.

[misfitchris]

Bukowski.

[amphiskios]

My favorite poet is A. E. Houseman. My favorite poem of his is Terrence this is stupid stuff.

`Terence, this is stupid stuff:
You eat your victuals fast enough;
There's nothing much amiss, 'tis clear,
To see the rate you drink your beer.
But oh, good Lord, the verse you make,
It gives a chap the belly-ache.
The cow, the old cow, she is dead;
It sleeps well, the horned head:
We poor lads, 'tis our turn now
To hear such tunes as killed the cow.
Pretty friendship 'tis to rhyme
Your friends to death before their time
Moping melancholy mad:
Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad.'

Why, if 'tis dancing you would be,
There's brisker pipes than poetry.
Say, for what were hop-yards meant,
Or why was Burton built on Trent?
Oh many a peer of England brews
Livelier liquor than the Muse,
And malt does more than Milton can
To justify God's ways to man.
Ale, man, ale's the stuff to drink
For fellows whom it hurts to think:
Look into the pewter pot
To see the world as the world's not.
And faith, 'tis pleasant till 'tis past:
The mischief is that 'twill not last.
Oh I have been to Ludlow fair
And left my necktie God knows where,
And carried half way home, or near,
Pints and quarts of Ludlow beer:
Then the world seemed none so bad,
And I myself a sterling lad;
And down in lovely muck I've lain,
Happy till I woke again.
Then I saw the morning sky:
Heigho, the tale was all a lie;
The world, it was the old world yet,
I was I, my things were wet,
And nothing now remained to do
But begin the game anew.

Therefore, since the world has still
Much good, but much less good than ill,
And while the sun and moon endure
Luck's a chance, but trouble's sure,
I'd face it as a wise man would,
And train for ill and not for good.
'Tis true, the stuff I bring for sale
Is not so brisk a brew as ale:
Out of a stem that scored the hand
I wrung it in a weary land.
But take it: if the smack is sour
The better for the embittered hour;
It will do good to heart and head
When your soul is in my soul's stead;
And I will friend you, if I may,
In the dark and cloudy day.

There was a king reigned in the East:
There, when kings will sit to feast,
They get their fill before they think
With poisoned meat and poisoned drink.
He gathered all that sprang to birth
From the many-venomed earth;
First a little, thence to more,
He sampled all her killing store;
And easy, smiling, seasoned sound,
Sate the king when healths went round.
They put arsenic in his meat
And stared aghast to watch him eat;
They poured strychnine in his cup
And shook to see him drink it up:
They shook, they stared as white's their shirt:
Them it was their poison hurt.
-- I tell the tale that I heard told.
Mithridates, he died old.

Really though, every single poem he wrote was a masterpiece. He would not allow a poem he thought was bad to be published, and ripped up the ones he did not like.

[Pittielynn]

Originally Said by foxyphoenix

I know it's totally cliche, but I absolutely love Robert Frost.

Agreed. I have loved and know his poem "Nothing Gold Can Stay" off by heart for as long as I can remember.

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower,
But only for an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to greif,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Honestly though, my favorite poet is Shakespeare. I'll post my favorite sonnet from him in the morning.
I also love his poetic plays. He is a genious in my opinion. His plays are masterpieces. He takes all aspects of the english language and weaves it into his daring, amusing and tragic plays.

[misfitchris]

to add to Bukowski who was just a drunken bum.
Beat Poetry:Ginsberg.
Death Poetry: Poe. Dickinson.
Irish: Yeats. Wilde.
nutty jew: silvia plath or however u spell.


also i dislike frost.

[Kali]

phillip larkin.

also: elizabeth bishop and gillian clarke.

for the time being anyway.

...

it's not my favourite poem by larkin, but it's fucking brilliant nonetheless:


This Be The Verse

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.

[misfitchris]

Originally Said by Kali

it's not my favourite poem by larkin, but it's fucking brilliant nonetheless:


This Be The Verse

reminds me of bukowski alot.
especially three oranges

Three Oranges
first time my father overheard me listening to
this bit of music he asked me,
"what is it?"
"it's called Love For Three Oranges,"
I informed him.
"boy," he said, "that's getting it
cheap."
he meant sex.
listening to it
I always imagined three oranges
sitting there,
you know how orange they can
get,
so mightily orange.
maybe Prokofiev had meant
what my father
thought.
if so, I preferred it the
other way
the most horrible thing
I could think of
was part of me being
what ejaculated out of the
end of his
stupid penis.
I will never forgive him
for that,
his trick that I am stuck
with,
I find no nobility in
parenthood.
I say kill the Father
before he makes more
such as
I.

[Kali]

the subject matter's similar, but the styles are very different.

bukowski always reminded me much more of palahniuk. i know somebody who was writing a biography on bukowski a couple of years ago, actually. odd to bump into somebody like that in england - and at a geoffrey hill reading, no less.

[oh, i do quite like geoffrey hill, i must say.]

this is probably one of my favourite bukowskis:


A Smile To Remember

we had goldfish and they circled around and around
in the bowl on the table near the heavy drapes
covering the picture window and
my mother, always smiling, wanting us all
to be happy, told me, "be happy Henry!"
and she was right: it's better to be happy if you
can
but my father continued to beat her and me several times a week while
raging inside his 6-foot-two frame because he couldn't
understand what was attacking him from within.

my mother, poor fish,
wanting to be happy, beaten two or three times a
week, telling me to be happy: "Henry, smile!
why don't you ever smile?"

and then she would smile, to show me how, and it was the
saddest smile I ever saw

one day the goldfish died, all five of them,
they floated on the water, on their sides, their
eyes still open,
and when my father got home he threw them to the cat
there on the kitchen floor and we watched as my mother
smiled


...


and i wish i could remember who wrote this, because it's genius. forgive errors, it's from memory:


The Language of Love

I was walking down this fucking street
When I spies this fucking bar,
And I'm feeling fucking parched like
So I nips in for a fucking jar.

Well, the place was fucking dead, mun,
For a Friday fucking night:
Me and this fucking red-haired tit
Was the only fuckers in sight;

So I calls myself a fucking pint
And her a fucking stout,
And we sit there fucking drinking
(Till they fucking chuck us out).

Then we get this fucking taxi
To a block of fucking flats,
And we kludge up to her fucking pad
(As pissed as fucking rats).

And then what fucking happened?
Oh yes, of fucking course:
We pissed off to her fucking bed
And had sexual intercourse.

[Jenn and tonic]

I've just finished doing a 15 page paper on the Elizabethan sonnet. So naturally right now I'm in the sonnet mindset. Shakespeare, Sidney, Greville, and Ralegh are my best friends at the moment.

But normally I like Emily Dickens, Dylan Thomas, Shelley, Keats, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Pablo Neruda...those are just a few that popped into my mind.

Ever since I was a little girl, this poem has always been my absolute favorite:

Holidays
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The holiest of all holidays are those
Kept by ourselves in silence and apart;
The secret anniversaries of the heart,
When the full river of feeling overflows;
The happy days unclouded to their close;
The sudden joys that out of darkness start
As flames from ashes; swift desires that dart
Like swallows singing down each wind that blows.
White as the gleam of a receding sail,
White as a cloud that floats and fades in air,
White as the whitest lily on the stream,
These tender memories are;--a Fairy Tale
Of some enchanted land we know not where,
But lovely as a landscape in a dream.

[foxyphoenix]

Ooh, Shakespeare.

I don't classify him as a poet... just because he's far too amazing for anyone else to even begin to compare.

He's my favorite. ^_^

[Jenn and tonic]

He's fantastic, I agree. I was going to pick one out of a few favorite sonnets to post, but I couldn't decide on just one.

[misfitchris]

If shakespeare was indeed a man. There is a whole library shelf that says that we have no idea who shakespeare was.

[foxyphoenix]

There's like four museums in the village of Stratford that say differently. They know his lineage, the room in which he was born, the schools he went to, the love of his life, her lineage, and all of his relatives.

[misfitchris]

I'm not talking about the man shakespeare. I'm referring to his work.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakesp...rship_question

[foxyphoenix]

I guess I don't understand... considering you said "who he was." Are you talking about the plays that are attributed to him, but are still unclear in origin?

[misfitchris]

I'm talking about authorship.
and also i found this quote from a book called who is shakespeare: ""The known facts about Shakespeare's life ... can be written down on one side of a sheet of notepaper."
So those 4 museums must have a lot of duplicates heh.

[foxyphoenix]

Which means that the hundreds of books about Shakespeare's life are fiction?
Somehow I doubt that.

[misfitchris]

umm. the debate stated is a well known debate by scholars worldwide.
Doubters of Shakespeare have included: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain. To start off with.